Stern:

A Novel

First published in 1962, Bruce Jay Friedman’s acclaimed first fiction novel, Stern, tells the story of a young Jewish man who relocates his family from the city to the suburbs, where they are besieged by voracious caterpillars and a bigotry that ranges from the genteel snub to outright confrontation.

“An iridescent tour de force...Mr. Friedman’s style is pure delight-supple, carnal, humorous and at times slightly surrealistic.”—The New York Times Book Review

“What makes Friedman more interesting than most of Malamud, Roth and Bellow is the sense he affords of possibilities larger than the doings and undoings of the Jewish urban bourgeois... What makes him more important is that he writes out of viscera instead of cerebrum.”—Nelson Algren in The Nation

“A strange and touching novel...funny and sad at the same time...in the tradition of a Charlie Chaplin movie.”—Time